1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for crisis management. More particularly, the present invention relates to a crisis management system for receiving information from various sources, chronologically organizing the information in files, updating automatically all related files, and providing the information in a comprehensible format to assist authorities during a crisis.
2. Description of Prior Art
Crisis management is the methodology of efficiently organizing information relating to an emergency or crisis situation. Crisis management maximizes the usefulness and availability of crucial information, while attempting to minimize wasteful or redundant information.
Several aspects are critical to an effective crisis management system. First, the information must be received and organized in an efficient manner. If the information is not filed appropriately upon receipt, this information may lose all utility because it can not be located during a critical time. Second, the information must be easily accessible to permit crisis teams (i.e., groups established to combat the crisis situation) to recall instantly any previously received information. This aspect is very important because most crisis situations have absolute deadlines or severe time constraints which must be met. An inability to access and recall critical information may well render useless any effort to solve the crisis situation. Finally, the information must be presented in an easily comprehensible format. For effective crisis management, the crisis team must be able to comprehend quickly all the information thus far obtained. Raw information which has not been organized and presented in an readily understandable format will inhibit crisis decision making because the team may not have time to mentally organize all the facts and circumstances arising during the crisis situation.
Crisis management is an increasing concern among many organizations which combat illegal and terrorist activities. For example, the FAA is concerned with hijackings, the CIA and military are faced often with hostage situations, and the FBI encounters kidnapping and extortion scenarios. In these activities, crisis management helps the crisis action teams to organize information pertaining to the descriptions of the suspects, the demands of the suspects, and investigative leads. Moreover, crisis management attempts to document chronologically each piece of usable information because the sequence of events is generally the most crucial factor in these crisis situations. Based on the organized information, the crisis teams develop informed strategies on how best to combat the specific crisis.
Crisis management is useful also during non-illegal emergencies, such as natural disasters. Groups in geographical locations prone for natural disasters (such as residents of California for earthquakes, those citizens of the southeastern U.S. for hurricanes, and citizens of the midwest U.S. for tornadoes) might employ crisis management techniques to organize information relating to the coordination of rescue efforts, the coordination of distributing supplies to the desired locations, and the management of incoming support items of food, clothing, and money. An appropriate crisis management system may help thwart the many hardships resulting from a natural disaster.
Present crisis management centers employ crude methods of organizing critical information. Often times, only a paper and pencil are used. For example, at a typical crisis command center (i.e., a location which has been established to serve as the intelligence headquarters during a particular crisis), butcher paper may be attached to the walls and tables. Then, as information is received, crisis team members write the information on the applicable wall section or table corresponding to the type of information received. Accordingly, as the crisis situation progresses, the crisis command center becomes a room full of disorganized lists of information.
As is readily apparent, this method of crisis management is extremely cumbersome and disorganized. Each crisis team member must constantly be aware of all lists of information scattered throughout the room, and then mentally organize this information into a logical sequence of events. As a result, crisis team efforts are inherently slowed simply due to the crisis management system employed. The information is not efficiently organized, mental steps are needlessly repeated by each team member, and the retrieval of certain key information may be severely delayed or lost.
To combat these problems, some groups have attempted to computerize the above described crisis management system. When information is received, a crisis team member enters this information into an the appropriate file in the computer. Then, when information is desired, a crisis team member accesses the appropriate file. As a result, information is no longer scattered throughout the room, and access time to information is reduced slightly.
However, many of the problems inherent in the paper and pencil management system are still prevalent in this computerized version because the systems are basically identical. The keyboard and screens of the computer system merely replace the pencil and paper. Yet, to retrieve key information, one still has to find the computer file in which the information was input. Then, if additional related information is required, one must access other files in which the related information was input. Thus, if a crisis team member forgets which file contains the information, or which files contain related information, valuable and crucial information will not be readily available to the crisis action team.
The conventional systems are also severely limited in the recordation of information. For example, when new information is received a crisis team member must sit down and manually enter the information into the computer. Moreover, the team member must input this information into each related file or else risk the information being overlooked during a critical time. Accordingly, this computerized system fails to enhance the decision making during critical times because it does not organize and make available automatically key information in the appropriate file, and all related files thereto.